Musings From New York

A true tale of a stool pigeon ... er, parrot.

I ran across a story today in WSJ (the stub linked to an article in Fortune). Apparently, Texan girl scouts are making audiotapes of themselves to teach Desi orphans "Texas English". One girl scout said, "We're helping them to learn how to pronounce English good."

If only we could teach the girl scouts how to use English grammar well!

The irony of it all. Sigh.

I finally got to watch Infernal Affairs on Saturday night ... and, I'm impressed. I'm not much of the thriller-fan, but the movie really does engage. It's not bloody or violent (well, not much) and more of a cat-and-mouse thriller than a thriller/scare-fest.

Briefly - a cop goes undercover in a triad. At the same time, the triad places a mole inside the police force. Both moles were friends training in the same batch of police recruits, only the undercover cop gets "thrown out" to create a credible illusion. Flashforward 10 years, to the setting of the movie. Now according to the press reviews I read, the movie was about each man questioning his allegiances. I didn't really see that, except at the very end. To me, the movie was about the two moles being ordered to "find themselves". In other words - both the cops & the triad realize there's a mole, but don't know who it is, and ironically order the moles to get to the bottom of the situation.

The movie was very bare-bones: I thought it could've been fleshed out a little more - to describe the inner turmoils, or to show their budding friendship as recruits. It would've been nice to see how the characters changed & evolved and how their past pressured them in the present.

But the whole cat-and-mouse thing ... very impressive! Good editting, and good script pacing as well.

Word of mention should be made to the theater. I watched the movie in the Clearview hall on 12th & 2nd. It's a small theater, and gave the effect of a large living room. I really liked that. Unfortunately, the theater seemed to favor the artsy/non-mainstream movies only.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Go baby, go baby!

Trey Parker & Matt Stone are gods of farce! I really enjoyed Team America. Right from the misguided attempts to save the world to the Bruckheimer-esque jumps from over-the-top violence to over-the-top melodrama & romance.

The songs were hilarious too (as they are in South Park shows & movie). You cannot help but sing "America! F@#k yeah!" when you walk out of the theater.

There was a lot of controversy over the movie. Ebert in particular said that the politcal stance of Stone & Parker was not very clear. Others felt that the movie was conservative with liberal overtones, or some such nonsense. I sort of agree with Ebert actually. While their skewering of film actors & their political campaignings was quite clear, I thought the movie's message of Team America doing more harm than good was sort of muted. It could've been an interesting aspect to develop, but instead it was just shown as shocked faces at the end of an action sequence.

On the whole, I laughed A LOT. But the movie could've done so much better.

We spent Saturday night at someone else's apartment (as Metal & Divya had packed up and shipped everything in their apartment earlier). I swear the entire apartment looked like something out of an Ikea catalogue! (Remember the beginning of Fight Club?!)

Rule Number 1: You do not talk about Fight Club!

Metal left for San Diego this morning, at some insane pre-dawn hour known to butchers, bakers ... but probably not to candlestick-makers. This was a photo from his (now emptied) apartment.

Some people have waaaaay too much time to come up with theories of who's going to win the election.

Often times I've wondered that. After all, a country that produces music as terrifying as Sabbath, mascots as terrifying as Eddie (from Iron Maiden) ... and in more recent times, The Spice Girls ... Well, I wonder no more. Here's the list:

1. Spiders
2. Terrorists
3. Snakes
4. Heights
5. Death
6. A visit to the dentist

Which means you'd rather be taken hostage at gun-point that hit an inoffensive creature with a newspaper. Go figure.

Talk about contentious ratings! :-)

I went to see The Motorcycle Diaries on Saturday night. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice movie, but I don't rate it as highly as the others in the group. I thought the script was a little ... wishy-washy (that's the official scientific term). I didn't see the evolution of Ernesto Guevara into the firebrand that he became in the 50's. The movie meandered from one encounter to another, not really solidifying the experiences of one or its effect on subsequent ones. In other words, the movie was like a collection of patchwork stories.

This was probably a result of making an adaptation from a book. However, books are able to parcel these little chapters and present a unified whole. This movie couldn't.

The other gripe I had was that the movie was a bit too long - I think about 15 minutes should've been lopped off. Some chapters didn't really add much to the movie (like the Chilean mechanic and his wife at the dance).

I appreciate the casting - Gael García Bernal as Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and Rodrigo De la Serna as Alberto Granado - who really carried off the movie. The former looked eeirily like the real Che Guevrea (or at least, the photos I've seen of him!). Alberto Granado, according to Wikipedia (see link below) was a bit of a revolutionary himself ... but turned out to be a comic foil in the movie. Movie adaptation license at play?

Nice movie, funny in parts, but considering the subject material, I think a more serious and cohesive movie should've been made.

BTW, Wikipedia has a nice bio of Che Guevara here.

I'd seen this around before, but never played about with it. It's part of Comedy Central's "Indecision 2004" program. It's pretty funny, give it a whirl.

I didn't want to post the extremely funny results here, for fear of someone taking it too seriously!